With the development of digital multimedia and networks, entertainment experiences in daily life are enriched. People can control playing of a device through a remote controller or a gesture, such as controlling it to switch to a previous channel program or a next channel program.
For controlling multiple devices, generally each device has a respective remote controller to perform control, but these remote controllers are not universal, and most of these controllers, such as a traditional TV or sound box, cannot be networked. There may be some network enabled controllers, for example, a device (e.g., a mobile phone, a pad) having computing and networking capabilities can be loaded with software supporting intercommunication protocols to control another equipment.
The above device control method is apparently not so convenient, people may need to select one remote controller corresponding to a specific device from a pile of remote controllers and change remote controllers from time to time to control different devices, or the device can be controlled through operations on a pad or a mobile phone by people familiar with basic operations on computers, or a single device is controlled by simple gestures. Obviously, to control different devices, people often need to learn how to use different manipulation tools, resulting in tedious operations. People prefer to use an easier and more natural operation way to control a device, based on such demands, gesture control advents; gesture control is currently a relatively new control way, and when gesture control is performed, a camera on a device monitors and identifies gestures and the device is controlled according to control commands corresponding to identified gestures.
At present, to implement gesture control, a controlled device is required to be equipped with a camera configured to implement visual identification. In practical application environments, there may be cases where multiple gesture control enabled devices have their respective cameras and gesture identification software, which results in not only a waste of resources but also possible malfunctions during gesture identification, e.g., a gesture instruction for a TV is taken for a manipulation of a set-top box by the latter. In addition, there are some devices not equipped with cameras and gesture identification software, and thus gesture control cannot be implemented thereon.